St Mary's Junior School win the Rotary Club Micro:bit Coding Challenge 2025

On Tuesday, a team of four Year 6 girls won the 'Micro:bit Coding Challenge' at 'The Centre For Computing History' here in Cambridge. The competition was organised by the Rotary Club of Cambridge and was open to pupils from Cambridgeshire schools.

The competition involved using a micro:bit (a tiny pocket-sized computer) to control a robot buggy, with two challenges at progressive difficulty levels, followed by a racetrack final. The buggy kit came with built-in sensors for line and obstacle sensing and the coding was carried out on a Raspberry Pi, before transferring the code to a micro:bit slotted into the buggy. The girls also had to use a second micro:bit as a controller to trigger their robot via Bluetooth. The participants had to use the block coding interface of the micro:bit to code the robot buggy to investigate these features, before navigating their buggies autonomously around a final track. The focus of the day was on how the participants used their problem-solving skills to complete the challenges.

The competition was contested by 11 teams from schools across Cambridgeshire. Many congratulations to our team, Charlotte R., Skye K., Charlotte G., and Antonia L., whose buggy completed the entire course with no penalties, and in a time that was more than five seconds quicker overall than any other buggy. The girls were presented with ‘The Francis Hookham Trophy’ to acknowledge their achievement and also received individual ‘Winner’ certificates. Our girls were praised by the organisers for their determination, perseverance, teamwork, sporting attitude and enthusiasm throughout the day.

Francis Hookham was a former, long-standing member of the Rotary Club who was renowned for his enthusiasm and encouragement in the use of computers and the internet. We are proud to be the recipients of his namesake trophy.